The Dark Souls games are my absolute favorite series of all time! I imported Demon’s Souls before it was released in the states and I have been hooked since. I have thousands of hours put into the Souls games and still play often and I am always looking for new ways to enjoy the games and the Cinders Mod is the best one I have found yet. I wasn’t expecting much after the hype around the Daughters of Ashe mod for the original Dark Souls. One of the greatest things about this series for me is the intricate lore that is built and carried on throughout the series and Daughters took far to many liberties with the lore and although had some changes that fit, the majority did not and made the whole thing aggravating for a lore purist like myself.

The Cinders mod takes DS3 and adds cut content that was supposed to be in the game and rebalances weapons, armor, spells, and rings. The lore is left alone and in fact, is added upon by having item descriptions that were in the cut content. Some enemies have had adjustments and replacements and levels have been slightly reworked but not in a bad way. Instead in a way that promotes exploration for returning players and a sense of newness to the game. I can’t convey how awesome this mod is. I loved DS3 as a game, but throughout all my hundreds of hours playing, have always had a bit of disgust for it at the same time because of how bad things were nerfed, terrible spell tracking, tons of useless weapons and the influence of Bloodborne’s implementation of fashion souls. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Bloodborne too, but armor sets were purely cosmetic in BB and followed suit in vanilla DS3. Not with this mod! Everything is viable with the right build.

I am linking a short video to showcase some of the changes. I am starting the video at the cleansing chapel. I am working on a Hex build. Notice the return of the Hex set from DS2. I will show the use of a new item, the fire ember. It is a reusable item that will add more fire damage to a fire infused weapon. The buff lasts until you die or travel between bonfires. Another tweak they have added is built up burn damage once something has sustained a hit. One of my favorite new items is the Ring Of Vengeance. It adds Dark damage when you roll through enemies. The only thing missing is the fact that the mod has to be played offline or you risk a soft ban. PVP is the only thing missing from making this the definitive version of Dark Souls 3!